(Sidebar here about Kaleigh:I expected her to be tall and imposing; I don't know why. She's actually petite and very sweet. "Sweet" is something that people from the South say a lot - "Oh, I love her! She's so SWEET!" I really don't say it often but I say it to describe Kaleigh because she truly is very sweet. She has this soft, sweet, almost child-like voice. It was really fun meeting her. Also? She's very smart and so grounded and we have very similar political persuasions.)It's that last little bit, about the political persuasions, that I realize I've undershared. (But seriously, the voice part, ignore that. I have dreams of sounding like a cross between Demi Moore and Kathleen Turner, and apparently it's not happening. So yeah, it's probably more like Drew Barrymore than anything else. And any perception that I'm tall? Woot!)

People who know me, and have known me for a long time, know that I'm undeniably liberal. Because of some of the places I've worked, however, I've learned to tone that part down and not share too much of my political thinking. Plus, with the current administration being what it is, it's hard to talk much about politics without cursing or sounding smug.

Here's the deal. I'm in favor of gay marriage. I'm in favor of legal abortion. I'm in favor of good sex education and access to birth control, which should make those legal abortions quite uncommon. I'm in favor of a national healthcare plan. I oppose the war. (And, unlike some other awesome liberal people, some of whom I love and admire, I opposed it from September 12, 2001.) I favor legalizing marijuana, not just for medicinal purposes. (And no, Mom, that doesn't mean I smoke it. I don't. Because if I did, someone might take my kids away, and I like them. But I resent that, even though I probably wouldn't smoke it even if it were legal because it's much more expensive than the boxed wine.)

And the crazy liberalism even seeps into my family life. I don't spank my kids. I breastfed them for a lot longer than the national average. We used cloth diapers and one of my kids is a vegetarian. Plus, they both havefunhair. And they both actively dislike George Bush and oppose the war (which, no, I haven't forced those opinions on them; in fact, you'd be amazed at some of the things my children have said about global politics when they were quite small).

But I don't really write much about these things. Why? Am I afraid of alienating some readers? Come on! All two dozen of them? Given that most of the bloggers I've met in person are as liberal as or more liberal than I, that's not a concern.

No, the real reason I don't write much about politics or world events is that I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'm pretty darn ignorant of such things these days. Since my commute is ten minutes on foot, I don't hear the hour of NPR news I used to hear every day. I rarely watch the evening news because I'm either not home or not in a room with a TV, and I don't listen to much radio at home because I'm usually busy with the kids. I don't read the paper. I'm sometimes awake to watch the Daily Show, my generation's preferred current events medium, but I'm just as often watching something else. (This is in stark contrast to myself years ago, by the way, when I was very much informed about current events and watched the entirety of the Iran-Contra hearings on television.)

So, there it is. I'm short, have a "sweet" voice, and I'm liberal. But it's really okay if you continue to imagine me taller and speaking more like Demi Moore. Because that's sort of how I imagine myself sometimes.